Homecoming, part 2 of 8, "Morning Light"

My heart is steadfast, O God;

I will sing and make music with all my soul.

Awake, harp and lyre

I will awaken the dawn.

I will praise you, O Lord, among the nations;

I will sing of you among the people,.

For great is your love, higher than the heavens;

Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens

and let your glory be over the Earth.

 Psalm 108

Surprised that he woke before the alarm, he glanced at the clock, laid back down, feeling surprisingly well rested.  

Grateful it was so early, it felt a bit exciting to be up before anyone else.  The young man noticed a rising energy, a kind of mysterious joy, greeting him this morning. As he quickly threw on his running shorts, shoes and hoodie, he saw the glow of the moon's full orb behind some early morning clouds that had drifted sleepily into area overnight. Rain was forecast for the day, 50 % chance, but he was grateful that it held off for awhile and he had a chance to run under the beautiful moon that would be lost in the sunrise soon.

He hit the pavement with a slow run after a short stretch. A thrill ran through his body as his face embraced the cool, quiet, early morning air.  He loved these rare mornings when he got out there before all the other runners.

He took his usual route through a couple streets, leading out onto the highway, hushed before the drum roll of rush hour which would begin in about 45 minutes.  He ran about a quarter of a mile before turning onto the nature path that ran along a creek in the forested city park for about a mile.  He enjoyed that part of the run best.  Sometimes he walked in there - if he had time - to embrace the sweet silence  in the early morning.  Occasionally he saw a couple of deer, who seemed annoyed at his abrupt presence.

Except for the moonlight, the park was pitch dark. 

As he slowed his pace, he noticed an unusual light near the baseball diamond.  A shaft of light, reverberated about 25 feet from him.  Strangely, he felt almost magnetically drawn to it.  A kind of clear bubble clung around it.  An energy, best described as sheer happiness, rose up in him, feeling internally much like sunshine feels on the skin.  Curious, he walked closer to the slim, straw-like, light shaft. Its warm glow drew him closer, embracing him.  If he didn't know better, he felt love, a presence, but no person was there.

He touched the clear bubble, which felt like a thick teflon tent material but looked like saran wrap. Instantly, he was inside, yet completely unafraid.  Outside it had looked like a one-inch diametrical cylindrical light shaft, like a pipe Inside it was a vast, interior space, stretching for miles and miles in every direction.  The light was so bright he couldn't make out anything in there, yet. It seemed as if time stopped. Maybe it was a worm hole, or a stargate or some other strange interdimensional portal.  He simply had no idea, but he was surprised that he wasn't the least bit afraid.  Slowly,  subtle kind of fluid peace permeated his being.  He could have been in there for a split second, hours or years, and whichever it was, he didn't care.  It was wonderful, beyond wonderful.  It was indescribable. It was awesome.

Then, far away, somewhere in the distance, he heard a voice, chanting.  As he listened harder to hear it, he realized it was his voice chanting.  Now, that was odd.  He listened harder, and he realized he was chanting, "alleluia, alleluia, alleluia."  

Ahh.... peace, love, joy, God, Christ - all words - just words, ideas, thoughts created in the mind, thrust into these polysyllabic sounds which lose meaning in translation from symbol back into meaning.  But, this was something entirely different.  He felt the praise and love, then he heard the sound, then the word.  It was all backwards.

"Words," he thought, "are like little boats that take you over the water to another place.  They carry you, direct you to somewhere."

"There's the words behind the words, the thought behind the thought, the intention behind even the first will and intention.  Then, it seems you're almost there.  Then, you meet essence."  

He was startling himself with his own thoughts.

"Where are these thoughts coming from," he wondered.

"Essence?"  he wondered, "whose essence, what essence?"

"Ultimately, only essence exists behind and before everything and every word ever spoken or written. The essence has a will of its own, that sometimes penetrates the thought and then the words, finally gaining its original intent, but too often thoughts, words lose their original intent."

"Essence ....."  he thought, or more like, felt.  In fact all thought was really feeling for him now. He felt immersed in, part of, contained by and yet still somehow independent within this cosmic light.  There was an awesome presence everywhere he couldn't describe and yet acknowledged to himself that It was there.  As he thought about words, they seem to circle around him, like sparkling snow flakes in the air. He wondered about the quality, integrity, substance really, of essence.  Does it have a will even, really?

He found himself feeling such a powerful love for the presence in which he was immersed and was all around him.  It seemed to love him.  He felt loved, nurtured, embraced, adored, cherished.  He felt valued as he couldn't even begin to understand.

"You are essence," he felt.  

"I am essence," he thought.

"There is only One essence," he felt, again.  "And, that essence always wants to go home to Me, to You, who is Me in You, to the Great Allness."

"It's like a magnetized cup of water (Jesus might have used the word wine to describe the quality of the substance of essence) drawing magnetically back to the ocean, its Source," he felt again.

"Like, it was lonely without the Great Sea," he teased, then realized the wisdom in the analogy he'd only posed, playfully

"Yes.  Exactly."

"Then, words are really nothing.  They are like me bothering the deer communing in the woods," he thought back.  "It would be so much better to get to the awareness of the essence and then simply stand in it, allowing it to permeate me with its meaning, transform me into its essence and then just be that essence."

"Yes, Exactly."

He looked around the rich, palatable brightness.  Love has an essence. Then, in a flash, he understood the word he had heard his own voice chanting in the distance, "alleluia, alleluia, alleluia."

The essence of that word, "Praise God," was conveyed through the chanting of the word.  It was felt and then received, and then almost alchemically, transformed the hearer into it's own essence of praise.

"So, there is only one word that is sung, ringing, resonating to something from something connecting, rejoining, wedding the hearer with its source, which is the Allness.  Only one word, among the trillions of words spoken, thought or written every day, is of any value, and it is "alleluia, alleluia, alleluia."  

"All others are far less vibrationally in the scale of meaning and ultimate essence," he felt the presence implying.

"because ..... all praise and light are to you and are you and you are all there is," he thought.

"Yes."

Love surged in him.  Delusional, he again heard a sound in the distance. Again, he listened intently, and again he heard the chanting of "Alleluia," only this time, the sound was different.  It was even more beautiful.  He realized it was not the sound of his voice, this time.  It was the sound of many voices, a whole chorus, choir, of voices, chanting all together, "Alleluia." 

"It's all of us together," he thought.

Then, very faintly he began to see shadows moving, and slowly becoming clearer as if they were coming out of a fog, and he saw the faces of the people he had heard singing. He recognized every face, faces he'd never seen before.  He saw them smiling and his smile greeting theirs.  Then, he felt alleluia in a way he couldn't ever describe.

"This is who we really are," he thought.  "We never left this place.  We only forgot because we were busy doing, thinking, planning and became so busy that we had to use weak, impotent words to convey something that cannot be conveyed."

"You can remember now.  You can go back, but you can return anytime with one word.  "Alleluia."  Every time you think it, say it, sing it, you return to me.  I am the praise and the praised and you are in me, as I am in you.  There is nothing else.  Everything else is only what happens when you forget."

"Always remember," he felt, "as often as you can, 'Alleluia'  and instantly you are here."


Photo: "Apollo Sunrise"
Credit: Apollo 12 Crew, NASA

Continued from:  Driving a Dream
Continues tomorrow with Cosmic Love